How to turn a Innuos device in to a 1536kHz capable embedded HQPlayer

[dkdali]

Just a FYI to people with Innuos streamers who might want to greatly improve their sound by turning their Innuos in to a 1536kHz capable embedded HQPlayer.

I have been researching this for some time so thought I would share for other Innuos owners who might have been considering HQPlayer but like to keep their nice Innuos HW.

I just upgraded my Zenith mk3 and it is one of the best upgraded I have ever done to my system for the small price of a HQPlayer license!

1: Download and install a Disk Image writer like Win32 Disk Imager on a PC (https://win32diskimager.org/). Don’t know how to do this on a Mac but I am sure someone else can help out.

2: Download Miska´s embedded HQPlayer Image (https://www.signalyst.com/embedded-install.html?)

3: Write Image to a USB drive (should be quite narrow to not interfere with the dac USB)

4: Connect keyboard and display to the Innuos (only needed in step 4+5 and maybe the display in step 6 the first time to see it working)

5: Change the boot priority in the bios to USB first (will still boot to the normal drive if there is no USB attached)

6: Boot Innuos with USB inserted

7: Configure HQPlayer over web interface (I am using PCM, Sinc-Mx, LNS15, 1.536M

on my May dac) (remember to change password)

8: Configure you player (I am using Roon from a ROCK server)

9: Enjoy the sweet combination of HQPlayer and your upgraded Innuos device!

[seeteeyou]

https://www.snakeoil-os.net/forums/Thread-Snakeoil-Installer-1-2-0-Gear-Isolation?pid=4560#pid4560

Quote

Just for your information, i installed a low latency kernel "liquorix" (https://liquorix.net/) on snakoil. Result is quite better in terms of SQ (better transparency, expand sound image and quickness improved)

After first comparisons, with this low latency kernel on my goldmund setup, snakoilOS 1.2.2 outperformed innuOS 1.4.7! And this is just the beginning of optimization. Well done guy!

 

HQPlayer

https://www.snakeoil-os.net/wiki/Players/hqplayer

 

Yet another potential option for those of us who might be interested.

[dkdali]

1 hour ago, seeteeyou said:

https://www.snakeoil-os.net/forums/Thread-Snakeoil-Installer-1-2-0-Gear-Isolation?pid=4560#pid4560

 

HQPlayer

https://www.snakeoil-os.net/wiki/Players/hqplayer

 

Yet another potential option for those of us who might be interested.

Thought for a moment you where trolling me with the reference to snakeoil... 🤣

I did not know of this OS option - thanks for sharing!

[BigAlMc]

On 7/19/2021 at 8:41 PM, dkdali said:

Just a FYI to people with Innuos streamers who might want to greatly improve their sound by turning their Innuos in to a 1536kHz capable embedded HQPlayer.

 

I have been researching this for some time so thought I would share for other Innuos owners who might have been considering HQPlayer but like to keep their nice Innuos HW.

I just upgraded my Zenith mk3 and it is one of the best upgraded I have ever done to my system for the small price of a HQPlayer license!

 

1: Download and install a Disk Image writer like Win32 Disk Imager on a PC (https://win32diskimager.org/). Don’t know how to do this on a Mac but I am sure someone else can help out.

 

2: Download Miska´s embedded HQPlayer Image (https://www.signalyst.com/embedded-install.html?)

 

3: Write Image to a USB drive (should be quite narrow to not interfere with the dac USB)

 

4: Connect keyboard and display to the Innuos (only needed in step 4+5 and maybe the display in step 6 the first time to see it working)

 

5: Change the boot priority in the bios to USB first (will still boot to the normal drive if there is no USB attached)

 

6: Boot Innuos with USB inserted

 

7: Configure HQPlayer over web interface (I am using PCM, Sinc-Mx, LNS15, 1.536M

 

on my May dac) (remember to change password)

8: Configure you player (I am using Roon from a ROCK server)

 

9: Enjoy the sweet combination of HQPlayer and your upgraded Innuos device!

 

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

I was under the impression that HQPlayer needed heavy CPU resources and the Celeron chip in the Innuos didn't have the chops to handle it. So is that not true then?

 

Cheers,

Alan

[seeteeyou]

PCM → PCM ain't too difficult for most CPUs these days, in reality even Raspberry Pi 4 could handle that with ease

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hugo-m-scaler-by-chord-electronics-the-official-thread.885042/page-650#post-15367437

Quote

HQPlayer PCM upsampling needs only a Core i3. That is 44.1/48khz PCM upsampled 16x to 705.6/768khz PCM uses 15% of a Core i5 and <10% on a Core i7. You can set bits=24, filter 1x,Nx = 'Sinc-M' (or 'poly-sinc-long-LP') and dither = none. IMO, with months of listening, this comes so very close to WTA1.

 

It's a totally different story if we're talking about PCM → DSD, though.

[BigAlMc]

Thanks @seeteeyou,

 

Cheers,

Alan

[dkdali]

Yes this solution is mainly for up-sampling and filtering in the same format as the source. I am using the Holo Audio KTE May DAC and it shines at 1536kHz and the Innuos is more than capable of delivering that. It is also capable of up-sampling DSD64/126 to DSD256 in all filters but EC.

Here are my settings:

[sitQ]

Thank you for sharing! I made a try, but is not working for me on my zenith mk3. I successfully booted the embedded hqplayer on a usb drive. In the config menu, I see, that the os recognised my dac. The problem is, that the hqplayer cannot find any music library. What should I do, to find music on the ssd drive of the Zenith? A took some picture... 

[dkdali]

I am using Roon as source and Roon finds the HQP Zenith as soon as you add it to Roon.

i unfortunatly cant help you with the HQPlayer build in player as i have never tried it.

I suggest you post your questions in the HQPlayer tread.

[Miska]

Media with supported filesystems should get auto-mounted under /run/media. Another option is naturally to configure SMB network mount.

 

Naturally things like Roon and UPnP still work without local library.

 

[seeteeyou]

FYI - if you're into installing your own OS such as Arch Linux, here's a fantastic kernel with 176KHz kernel timer frequency / Xenomai 4 / EVL

 

https://www.stsd99.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=20388#p20388

 

And then we could even top it off with this ALSA Library

 

https://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?13157-piCorePlayer6-1-0-Xenomai-44-1-48KHz雙機入門簡易安裝教學&p=245405#post245405

 

As I mentioned before, the same developer also made something similar for RPi 4B and that's far superior to the NAA image

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/64086-a-short-introduction-to-tiny-core-linux/#comment-1163176

https://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?13157-piCorePlayer6-1-0-Xenomai-44-1-48KHz雙機入門簡易安裝教學&p=244635#post244635

[Miska]

8 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

As I mentioned before, the same developer also made something similar for RPi 4B and that's far superior to the NAA image

 

Which way?

 

Quote

here's a fantastic kernel with 176KHz kernel timer frequency

 

Modern kernels however are tickless, not having any particular timer frequency, but instead calculating distance to next wakeup.

 

But that kind of timer rate is good way to burn a lot of CPU power for no benefit.

 

[sworksone]

I managed to get this to work on my Zenith and May and the sound quality is absolutely amazing without even playing with the various HQPlayer settings.  Thanks to dkdali for figuring this out and the personal back and forth yesterday to get it to work.  The one thing I’m presently stuck on is getting access through Roon to the files stored on the Zenith with HQPlayer running.  The Zenith shows up on the network when running it as a Roon Player in Innuos OS but when I boot from the USB and HQPlayer is running it’s no longer visible on the network.  I must be able to somehow access the “local” files on the Zenith with HQPlayer embedded but haven’t yet figured out how to do this.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated (my knowledge of both Roon and HQPlayer is very limited).

[Miska]

22 hours ago, sworksone said:

I must be able to somehow access the “local” files on the Zenith with HQPlayer embedded but haven’t yet figured out how to do this.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated (my knowledge of both Roon and HQPlayer is very limited).

 

On /library page of HQPlayer web interface, there's already predefined path for scanning content to the library. If there's a detected and supported filesystem available on the computer, it will be auto-mounted under /run/media which you can scan for content. This scanning will take a while to complete.

 

You can then access and play the library contents for example using HQPlayer Client application (included in HQPlayer Desktop installation package for logistical reasons). Or alternatively using HQPDcontrol app on iOS/Android devices.

 

[sworksone]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  How long should it typically take?  I tried a scan a few times but after approximately 30min I received a web browser error that connection was lost with the sever.  When I refreshed the web interface the library was still showing blank.  

[AudioDoctor]

20 minutes ago, sworksone said:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  How long should it typically take?  I tried a scan a few times but after approximately 30min I received a web browser error that connection was lost with the sever.  When I refreshed the web interface the library was still showing blank.  

 

It took me a frustrating while to figure this out. I will help you. When you're entering the path to the Library, do you hit enter and are greeted with the message that says Success, and then nothing happens?  Frustrating, right?

Here's the tip. Enter the path, and then don't hit enter, press the SCAN button, and it will then scan your library at the path you designated.

 

As far as I can tell, the Success! message means you have entered a path correctly and nothing else.

[sworksone]

Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately that’s not the issue as I have been pressing scan.  Tonight I tried a few different paths and at least received the “success” message instead of it getting stuck but after less than a minute it came back with zero files found.  When not using HQPlayer I can access the files on the Zenith from my Roon core but not when booting from the usb to use HQP embedded.  

[Miska]

How does "mount" or "df" command output look like on console?

 

[sworksone]

Unless you can guide me, I don’t believe I can check the output as the Zenith is password protected.   

[noreilly]

I have managed to get HQPlayer running on my Zen Mini Mk3.

 

Firstly download the 'hqplayer-embedded-<LatestVersion>-x64gen'. The Zen Mini Mk3 has an Intel Intel Quad Core N4200

 

I initially tried a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 32GB USB key, it booted but failed to complete the boot process. I then extracted the image to a 128GB M.2 in a USB casing. HQPlayer was able to successfully boot. I was able to login. Running 'df -h' I could see the '/run/media/sda4' (Original library location) mountpoint. I could 'cd' down through these directories and read the content of my Innuos library. I re-ran the scan from http://HQPlayer_IP/library, while waiting for it complete you can run 'top' command. The 'prstat' command wasn't present.

 

I also noticed that the CLI response while trying to access /'run/media/sda4' (Original library location) was very slow. I presume this is because of the Library Scan running. Unfortunately I got an out of memory error while running the scan the web page crashed and I was logged out of the console. I rebooted and restarted the Library scan and it crashed again, with the same error.

 

It would be nice if there was a progress indicator or files found counter incremented as the library scan was running.

 

I was running hqplayer 4.31.0.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

Niall

[noreilly]

Guys,

 

I re-ran the scan on a specific directory in my Zen Mini MK3 where I had ripped a CD and HQPlayer was able to read it. The 'Out of Memory' may have been somtehing to do with my Library. For now I have an imported Album to work on.

 

Niall

[noreilly]

OMG, it working... I'm so excited!!

[Miska]

On 4/26/2022 at 10:28 PM, noreilly said:

I re-ran the scan on a specific directory in my Zen Mini MK3 where I had ripped a CD and HQPlayer was able to read it. The 'Out of Memory' may have been somtehing to do with my Library. For now I have an imported Album to work on.

 

If you keep running out of memory, you can scan the library in parts, by specifying suitable subdirectories in the scan path. This way there's less metadata to keep in memory during scan operation.

 

[noreilly]

Thanks for the response Miska, I found what really helped was renaming my top level directories from: First Name [FLAC] to FirstName-FLAC, the removal of spaces in filenames...

[1laraz]

Should the USB drive with the image be always attached to the Zenith?